After the Rain: How the West Lost the East

After the Rain: How the West Lost the East, Sam Vaknin, Narcissus Publications, 2000

This is a series of short essays, written and published over the last few years, on the politics and economics of present-day Central and Eastern Europe. More specifically, it is about the breakup of Yugoslavia, written from the perspective of someone who has spent the last several years living in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Therefore, the author has seen a lot of things from the "inside" (a very rare perspective here in the West).

When politicians and government agencies in the West are accused of corruption or gross stupidity, no one bats an eyelash. When the same thing happens in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the offenders are subject to heaps of scorn, diatribes and/or sanctions. The West firmly believed that if the communist hierarchy was removed in Eastern Europe, millions of common people would embrace capitalism like a long-lost relative. It was up to the West to provide the opportunity. The West didn't realize that communism was a mutual undertaking, a decdes long symbiotic relationship between all parts of society. "Post-communist societies are sick and their institutions are a travesty."

Privatization, the selling of state assets to private companies to encourage capitalism, is little more than a "spastic orgy of legalized robbery of state assets" where millions lost their jobs while a few people became rich. Large amounts of foreign aid, intended to help the suffering people of Kosovo, ended up in markets, white and black, all over the region, still carrying the stamps of their donors. UN forces have been known to require bribes to let goods into Serbia. A system of winks and nods, plus lots of palm greasing, came into existence between the multilateral institutions and the "ruling mob families that pass for regimes in these parts of the planet."

Some knowledge of present-day European politics and economics (more than comes from watching the TV evening news) would help in reading this book. Otherwise, this is a very good and very well-written group of essays from an extremely needed perspective, here in the West. This one is well worth reading.